Fair Games

House of Games

Written and directed by David Mamet

At the USA/Harvard Square

"MANY things that should be pleasures are not," says one of the characters near the beginning of House of Games. As writer-director David Mamet quickly shows us, many things that should not be pleasures are.

Like last year's Blue Velvet, House of Games deals with a supposedly normal character who gets pulled into an undertow of evil and finds, to her surprise, that she enjoys living out the part of herself she's always repressed. Lindsay Crouse is Dr. Margaret Ford, a committed workaholic who is unable to enjoy the success of her first book, entitled Driven: Obsession and Compulsion in Everyday Life. She is as obsessive and lost as the people she treats. Sucking ferociously on cigarette after cigarette, she is the picture of neurosis.

The opening half hour is as stiff and controlled as Margaret. House wears the self-conscious artiness of its images and characters like a badge, and Mamet's dialogue sounds impossibly stilted. The scenes between Crouse and her patients demonstrate that no one would ever tell this woman anything. Everything is terribly solemn and Bergman-esque.

Her patients provide Margaret with the excitement which is completely missing from her own life. In an attempt to save one of them, she seeks out Mike, the loan shark who is threatening him. Mike is a slick, charming con man, played with great, seedy elan by Joe Mantegna. He shows her some of the tricks of the con man trade, and for the first time in the movie we see Margaret shed her stiff exterior and smile.

Here the movie loosens up. Margaret starts hanging out with the con men, ostensibly to make them the object of another book. In reality, she's getting illicit kicks out of their scams.

ANOTHER relief is that Mamet does a much better job mimicking the cadences of the criminals' speech. He even begins to write in some jokes. (One of the con men talks about being a member of "the United States of Kiss My Ass.") As in some of his plays, such as American Buffalo and especially Glengarry Glen Ross, Mamet is fascinated with the underworld businessman. Mamet's crooks have most of the same qualities of normal nine to fivers. Their business is riskier but it has its own rules and its own drudgery.

Though the film does eventually eliminate some of its pretentious stiltedness, it's never exactly freewheeling. Part of this is due to Crouse's performance. Her face can be as expressionless as a blank billboard, and she's enigmatic from beginning to end.

Visually, the movie is incredibly stylized. Juan Ruiz Anchia's cinematography relies on lighting set-ups that are almost expressionistic and the ambience is strictly film noir.

All of this creates a careful, studied quality. There's no one to trust in this film, not even Margaret, since Crouse prevents us from reading her completely. The suspense in this thriller is mostly psychological, although the plot that Mamet concocted has enough power to propel the film.

House of Games proves that there's a lot less difference between the so-called normal people and criminals than we would like to think. Mamet's deadpan presentation of evil is bone-chilling. And as Mike tells Margaret, you may "learn some things about yourself you'd rather not know."